Archive for hawaii

I'd always nod along when Randi Rhodes would say that it's not if it'll happen, but when. And I, like she, always wondered what the catalyst will be that finally lights the fuse.

Back in 2011, the spark that begat the Arab Spring was one of those proverbial straws breaking the camel's back-- a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire to protest his government's treatment of himself and his fellow citizens along with its brazen corruption.

Before dawn on Friday, Dec. 17, as [Mohammed] Bouazizi pulled his cart along the narrow, rutted stone road toward the market, two police officers blocked his path and tried to take his fruit. Bouazizi’s uncle rushed to help his 26-year-old nephew, persuading the officers to let the rugged-looking young man complete his one-mile trek.

The uncle visited the chief of police and asked him for help. The chief called in a policewoman who had stopped Bouazizi, Fedya Hamdi, and told her to let the boy work.

Hamdi, outraged by the appeal to her boss, returned to the market. She took a basket of Bouazizi’s apples and put it in her car. Then she started loading a second basket. This time, according to Alladin Badri, who worked the next cart over, Bouazizi tried to block the officer.

“She pushed Mohammed and hit him with her baton,” Badri said.

Hamdi reached for Bouazizi’s scale, and again he tried to stop her.

Hamdi and two other officers pushed Bouazizi to the ground and grabbed the scale. Then she slapped Bouazizi in the face in front of about 50 witnesses.

Bouazizi wept with shame.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he cried, according to vendors and customers who were there. “I’m a simple person, and I just want to work.”

... After the slap, Bouazizi went to city hall and demanded to see an official. No, a clerk replied. Go home. Forget about it.

Bouazizi returned to the market and told his fellow vendors he would let the world know how unfairly they were being treated, how corrupt the system was.

He would set himself ablaze.

“We thought he was just talking,” said Hassan Tili, another vendor.

A short while later, the vendors heard shouts from a couple of blocks away. Without another word to anyone, Bouazizi had positioned himself in front of the municipal building, poured paint thinner over his body and lit himself aflame.

The president made a show of handing (his mother) Manoubya a check for 10,000 dinars (about $14,000). But the mother said Ben Ali’s staffers took the check back after the cameramen were escorted from the room. “I never got any of it,” she said.

Three weeks later, Bouazizi died.

In early January, the policewoman was arrested, but it was too late. The story had spread, and three months later, a revolution that sprouted in a small village in Tunisia and flowered in Egypt has morphed into a contagion that threatens regimes in Bahrain and Yemen, has enveloped Libya in civil war, and is unsettling even the region’s more placid monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

And thus, it began. The flame that Bouazizi used to light himself on fire was the spark that lit the fuse of the powder keg that had slowly heating, though decades of injustice, public humiliation and worse. It finally blew.

Revolutions are explosions of frustration and rage that build over time, sometimes over decades. Although their political roots are deep, it is often a single spark that ignites them — an assassination, perhaps, or one selfless act of defiance.

Of course, the word had to spread. Facebook was the conduit and nothing could stop it. And the rest, as they say, is history.

An 18-year old young man named Michael Brown was walking down the street with his friend Dorin Johnson, headed for Brown's grandmother's house. According to Johnson, a cop pulled up next to them and said, "Get the F--k on the sidewalk." And that's where the details get sketchy.

The police say that Brown jumped into the police car and fought with the officer over her gun. Witnesses say that Brown ran from the car, only to be hit by a bullet, after which he put his hands up in surrender, only to be shot again in the face and the chest before falling to the ground dead.

The 43-year-old father of six, who was asthmatic, can be heard saying “I can’t breathe” several times in the footage, and the city’s chief medical examiner confirmed that much on August 1, when he ruled Garner’s death a “homicide by chokehold.”

The militarization of the American police was on global display during the Occupy Wall Street protests which began on Sept 17, 2011, when protesters gathered to occupy a park on, as the name implies, Wall Street.

On November 15, almost a year after Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest police and government actions in Tunisia, police in New York City - decked out in full riot gear regalia - descended on Zuccotti Park, which the occupiers had renamed Freedom Plaza, arresting protesters and journalists alike, injuring many in the process.

And finally, if you're a regular listener of my show, you know that I think many of our problems are caused by the corporate control of our media. That's one of the reasons I'm such a big fan of The Nation magazine. They're truly independent with no corporate overlords or influence.

I was thrilled to welcome Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, to the show this morning to talk about the situation in Ukraine - and the fact that it's nothing like what you're hearing from the TV so-called "news" programs.

The Island of Hawai'i is also known as the Big Island. Green jungles, blue waves and red hot lava please the senses on this North Pacific island with its equally colorful Polynesian history.

Find most resorts and attractions around Kailua-Kona on the west coast. To see green sea turtles, visit Kahalu'u bay or Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park. For a break from beaches, the grand Hulihe'e Palace and the sacred site of Pu'uhonua are worth exploring.

Your mileage may vary, but I lived in Hawaii years ago and did not find it overly expensive, which I loved. It was a pleasant place to be with friendly people. Aloha!

Seems like Congressmen all over the place are on a law breaking spree. A few days ago it was Florida Congressman Trey Radel. Now it's Hawaii's Paul Kersey. And if he isn't apprehended soon, we may need to call McGarrett and hear him say, "Book 'em, Dano, murder one."

A U.S. House of Representative member of Hawaii has become Charles Bronson's vigilante character Paul Kersey, from Death Wish. His name is Tom Brower and there should be an APB put out on him. He needs to be stopped, apprehended and arrested for criminal assault, stalking and destruction of private property. He's armed himself with a lethal weapon, a sledgehammer and he's targeting the homeless. This is not a joke. He's armed and dangerous.

He must be arrested immediately before he commits murder. You know those awful viral cellphone videos that some wilding teens make on their cellphones t hen post on the Internet? Those horrific attacks where they randomly attack, kick and beat some homeless person until they're unconscious? Well guess which member of Congress has been doing this? And he's been caught on tape! (See Below)

His mission is to attack homeless victims by threatening them wielding his deadly weapon. If they elude him, he destroys their possessions and the privately owned shopping carts that homeless use to transport their personal belongings. He's taking the law into his own hands. These shopping carts he's destroying are not his. They're privately owned or leased by individual stores. He has no right to do that. This deranged man justifies it as getting back at the homeless.

Getting back at them? For what?

This armed lunatic is causing innocent, homeless people to fear for their life as he stalks them and their belongings, leaving a wake of destruction of private property. These people may be homeless but they're not without rights. This congressman is taking justice into his own hands, the consummate definition of a vigilante. He's a criminal and he's picking on the weak and vulnerable. Does he think these people chose to be homeless? This isn't just a matter that this guy shouldn't be re-elected. It's a matter of the police doing their jobs and taking a dangerous criminal off the streets.

Today's the first day of standard time. At 2 AM this morning, Daylight Saving's time ended. No, I got that right. You'd think it was the other way around, daylight savings would come for the winter months, but it's actually the summer, when you analyze it. Veracity Stew.com:

It would seem to be more efficient to do away with the practice altogether. The actual energy savings are minimal, if they exist at all. Frequent and uncoordinated time changes cause confusion, undermining economic efficiency. There’s evidence that regularly changing sleep cycles, associated with daylight saving, lowers productivity and increases heart attacks. Being out of sync with European time changes was projected to cost the airline industry $147 million a year in travel disruptions.

Bottom line is it gets darker earlier now but we have more daylight in the morning. That is of course, unless you live farther from the equator where you get 24 hour daylight in the summer (Scandanavia, Alaska) and total dark days during the winter. Kind of crazy but people adjust.

Here we are graphically now, and as proposed:

What you see above is the breakdown of the four time zones we currently have in the states (on the left) and the proposed two time zone map on the right.

Okay, what's up with that? Well, for starters, practicality. We're basically a country of commercialism. Business is where the money is. As technology has become globalized, so has business. And in the states, it's nothing to have offices across the entire country. But what happens when you want to do business in New York and you live in LA? You have to find a mutual time when everyone is in the office. But when it's 9 AM in LA, it's noon in NYC and everyone's gone to lunch. When they get back around 3 PM Eastern, it's noon in LA and the west coast people are heading off to lunch. So your mutually "in the office hours" are really very limited. When the LA people return from lunch at three, the New Yorkers are going home for the day.

This year, Americans on Eastern Standard Time should set their clocks back one hour (like normal), Americans on Central and Rocky Mountain time do nothing, and Americans on Pacific time should set their clocks forward one hour. After that we won’t change our clocks again – no more daylight saving. This will result in just two time zones for the continental United States. The east and west coasts will only be one hour apart. Anyone who lives on one coast and does business with the other can imagine the uncountable benefits of living in a two-time-zone nation (excluding Alaska and Hawaii).

As it is now the time zones are arbitrarily drawn. Some larger than others, some states even in two different time zones. Crazy.

Now before you go all ballistic on me, think about it for a beat. What really changes? We'll no longer lose an hour of sleep. We commercially can be more productive. And even now in some states it gets darker earlier than in others. We'll only be, at the most one hour time difference than anyone else in the US.

So what are we holding onto:

It’s a controversial practice that became the official standard in America in 1966 and adjusted throughout the 1970s with the intent of conserving energy. The fall time change feels particularly hard because we lose another hour of evening daylight, just as the days grow shorter.

Truth is, the hours of sunlight per day don't change, nor do the hours of darkness. That's determined by how close or far we live from the equator and that's not changing. Just when those hours fall. We simply adjust.

Think of how much easier it will be to chat with friends on the other side of the country? And plane flights will be so much easier to figure out. You now leave LA at noon for a five hour flight to NYC and get there around 8 PM, eastern time. Wouldn't it be better to arrive at 6 local? Look at how much more time you'd have to spend in the Big Apple.

As it is, there are states like Arizona and Hawaii that opted out of Daylight Savings and don't have time changes. They survive quite well. So can the rest of us. And no more states with two time zones.

Maybe it's time to change time. Think about it. Nothing much is going to be different, except perhaps our sanity an not having to become slave twice a year to programming all those damn, digital clocks.